Dawkins: 'I'd rather be remembered for science'

When we are able to muck around with our own genes more, where do you think it will take us?The funny thing is that if you take the two parts of the Darwinian formula, mutation and selection, we've been messing around with the selection part with just about every species – except our own. We have been distorting wolves to Pekineses and wild cabbages to cauliflowers, and making huge revolutions in agricultural science. And yet with a few exceptions, there have been no attempts to breed human Pekineses or human greyhounds.

Now the mutation half of the Darwinian algorithm is becoming amenable to human manipulation, people have jumped to asking questions – what's going to happen when we start tinkering with genes? – while sort of forgetting that we could have been tinkering with selection for thousands of years and haven't done it. Maybe whatever has inhibited us from doing it with selection will do the same with mutation.

Do you believe there is a genetic basis to irrationality?It would be very surprising if there wasn't a genetic basis to the psychological predispositions which make people vulnerable to religion.

One idea about irrationality that I and various other people have put forward is that the risks we faced in our natural state often came from evolved agents like leopards and snakes. So with a natural phenomenon like a storm, the prudent thing might have been to attribute it to an agent rather than to forces of physics. It's the proverbial rustle in the long grass: it's probably not a leopard, but if it is, you're for it. So a bias towards seeing agency rather than boring old natural forces may have been built into us.

That may take quite a lot of overcoming. Even though we no longer need to fear leopards, we inherit the instincts of those who did. Seeing agency where there isn't any is something that may have been programmed into our brains.

If we are irrational, perhaps one of the reasons people bristle at you is they feel their nature is under attack.We accept that people are irrational for good Darwinian reasons. But I don't think we should be so pessimistic as to think that therefore we're forever condemned to be irrational.

This article appeared in print under the headline "A man for all reason"

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Richard Dawkins is emeritus professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Oxford. He is the author of several books, including The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. His most recent is An Appetite for Wonder: The making of a scientist (Ecco Press), part one of a two-part memoir

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"People hate their religion being criticised. It's as if you said they had an ugly face" (Image: Robert Wilson)